Set to the wail of sirens, a viral video on social media claims to indicate scenes of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. Textual content on a Sept. 27 Fb video stated merely, “Florida Hurricane Helene.”
Loads of professional footage exists of the hurricane, which made landfall close to Perry, Florida, as a Class 4 storm and precipitated intensive wind and flood injury throughout the Southeast. However this video just isn’t genuine. A few of its clips are from earlier storms in numerous states and completely different years. Some have been altered with synthetic intelligence or existed on-line earlier than Hurricane Helene shaped.
The Fb video was flagged as a part of Meta’s efforts to fight false information and misinformation on its Information Feed. (Learn extra about our partnership with Meta, which owns Fb, Threads and Instagram.)
We used reverse-image search to seek out the place a few of these clips began on-line. We discovered different clips circulating on-line a number of months earlier than Helene made landfall.
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The Fb video’s opening clip is fake on two completely different factors, The scene reveals closed retailers at a Florida mall as Hurricane Matthew tore by means of in 2016. And the tornado behind the mall is computer-generated. Reality-checkers on the European Broadcasting Union debunked the video after social media customers handed it off as a hurricane in Tanzania.
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We couldn’t discover the situation of the second clip displaying particles flying as automobiles handed, however we discovered one other model posted in October 2023.
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The third clip that includes a automobile being tossed by robust winds is from a 2015 hurricane in Taiwan.
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The fourth clip is from a July 2023 twister that ripped by means of Dortches, North Carolina, and that AccuWeather shared then.
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We discovered a file of the fifth clip displaying particles flying throughout an house advanced being shared on-line earlier than Helene.
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We noticed the sixth clip in a November 2022 Instagram submit.
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We discovered the seventh video on TikTok, posted 10 days earlier than Helene crashed into Florida.
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The eighth clip that includes palm bushes as they wrestle in opposition to highly effective winds was shared on-line in November 2023 and featured in a fact-check by The Quint, a digital information platform.
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We discovered the ninth clip, displaying particles from bushes rapidly filling a road, shared on-line on Sept.18, per week earlier than Hurricane Helene.
We fee the declare that this video reveals scenes of Hurricane Helene False.
